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Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.


Ambrose Bierce

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Destiny. A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.
AMBROSE BIERCE I'm still a big 'Grey's Anatomy' fan.
BROOKE ELLIOTT I used to watch 'Grey's Anatomy' pretty religiously.
ERINN HAYES There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy.” ~ Ambrose ...
J.J. MCAVOY Love, what you DO, Respect, who DOES for you, Appreciate, who DOES for others, Salute, who DOES for ...
PRITISH PATTANAIK Authority can be faked. That's why impersonating a police officer is a crime. Sometimes the outw...
JOHN ORTBERG I always find Victoria's Secret models a bit weird.
EDIE CAMPBELL Temptation is a woman's weapon and man's excuse.
H. L. MENCKEN No formal course in fiction-writing can equal a close and observant perusal of the stories of Edgar ...
H. P. LOVECRAFT When he entered the anteroom, two women looked up at him. One was Miss Robertson, the governor's sec...
GEORGE P. ELLIOTT My mother's passion for something more, to write a different destiny for a dirt-poor farmer'...
FAYE DUNAWAY There's no excuse to be bored. Sad, yes. Angry, yes. Depressed, yes. Crazy, yes. But there's...
VIGGO MORTENSEN There's no excuse for fur in this day and age.
STELLA MCCARTNEY Depend on no one else to give you what you want
DESTINY'S CHILD If we all took a minute to reflect upon the wrong we do we would be quite surprised or shocked.Inste...
GARY F EVANS... Ants can carry twenty times their own body weight, which is useful information if you're moving out ...
RON DARIAN The man I am today it's not the man of yesterday
CHRISTOPHER FUDGE is a broken man an outlaw?"

"More or less." Brienne answered.

Septon Meribald ...
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN The summer sun continued to rise in the sky and propel shocks of heat down on the city and the heavy...
HUBERT SELBY JR. If I were to reduce all my feelings and their painful conflicts to a single name, I can think of no ...
HERMANN HESSE Thus have I, Wall, my part discharged so;
And, being done, thus Wall away doth go.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Growing old's like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven't committed.
ANTHONY POWELL I'm proud to say that I was that guy playing the character of Dr. Burke on 'Grey's Anato...
ISAIAH WASHINGTON Cruelty is a tyrant that's always attended with fear.
THOMAS FULLER Abortion isn't a lesser evil, it's a crime. Taking one life to save another, that's what...
POPE FRANCIS It's not about failure; it's about trying something and risking something for attaining your...
CAROL ALT For us, destiny always feels... if you obey, it's almost a passive thing.
DANNY BOYLE 'The Devil's Dictionary' reads like a collection of great Twitter posts. And as people d...
VICTOR LAVALLE I can tell you that you will have your hearts broken more by the people you love than by the people ...
MARGARET PETERSON HADDIX In the creative community, there's no excuse for not making a more equitable environment.
KATHLEEN KENNEDY I'm a night owl for sure. I was born at 1 A.M., and that's the excuse I use.
KARLA SOUZA Christ's crucifix shall be made an excuse for executing criminals.
WILLIAM BLAKE Francesca was a strong believer in fate. She assumed he picked up the habit from her therapist who w...
COURTNEY CAROLA History is a wheel, for the nature of man is fundamentally unchanging. What has happened before will...
GEORGE R.R. MARTIN There's something to be said for failing. It's not the failure you feel, it's the failur...
KEVIN SMITH Before 'Grey's Anatomy,' I was doing musicals, plays, commercials, you name it.
CHANDRA WILSON Diets are a fool's errand.
EVANGELINE LILLY It's impossible for a Democrat to be a failure. It's impossible for a Democrat to be a repro...
RUSH LIMBAUGH One of the things that's often forgotten about drug rehabilitation, it's not a destiny. It&#...
PETER HOBSON Are you sure/That we are awake? It seems to me/That yet we sleep, we dream
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE In any bureaucracy, there's a natural tendency to let the system become an excuse for inaction.
CHRIS FUSSELL It's a great pity that things weren't so arranged that an empty head, like an empty stomach, wouldn'...
UNKNOWN We should be ready for a change.
DEYTH BANGER Did you see more glass?
J.D. SALINGER She was a girl who for a ringing phone dropped exactly nothing. She looked as if her phone had been ...
J.D. SALINGER My fans kept asking where they could get clothes like Destiny's Child's, so it was only natu...
BEYONCE KNOWLES It's easy to fool the eye but it's hard to fool the heart.
AL PACINO Failure is nature's plan to prepare you for great responsibilities.
NAPOLEON HILL Any excuse will serve a tyrant.
AESOP Any excuse will serve a tyrant
AESOP ...those of us who write for children are called, not to do something to a child, but be someone for...
KATHERINE PATERSON Space offers extraordinary potential for commerce and adventure, for new innovations and new tests o...
BILL FRIST At the root of many a woman's failure to become a great cook lies her failure to develop a workm...
ROBERT FARRAR CAPON My job is to put words together and tell a story. If that doesn't work for you, it's not a w...
ALAN ZWEIBEL Maybe... there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for unlawfully detaining 120 people. Maybe they...
MARK THOMAS I feel so honored to be able to say "What I do is for my son" without that being an excuse to do stu...
C. JOYBELL C. Being in a band you can wear whatever you want - it's like an excuse for Halloween every day.
GWEN STEFANI I am favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it&...
MILTON FRIEDMAN We would be billionaires, but we took responsibility for Summa's failure.
EDWIN SOERYADJAYA Destiny waits alike for the free man as well as for him enslaved by another's might.
AESCHYLUS There's no excuse for skimping on national defense when the country is at war.
BILL NELSON White-on-white crime is a devastation in America like so-called black-on-black crime. It's not b...
MICHAEL ERIC DYSON Cancer's like the ultimate excuse. Who's gonna say, 'Oh, no, you have to show up for thi...
MELISSA ETHERIDGE There's no excuse for the macro corruption, but Afghanistan was always an informal society with ...
KHALED HOSSEINI In America, there's a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world.
BARACK OBAMA There's no excuse for the young people not knowing who the heroes and heroines are or were.
NINA SIMONE Any actor who judges his character is a fool - for every role you play you've got to absorb that...
ALAN RICKMAN A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenceless!
EDWARD GEORGE EARLE LYTTON BULWER-LYTTON, FIRST BARON LYTTON Cynical realism is the intelligent man's best excuse for doing nothing in an intolerable situati...
ALDOUS HUXLEY Ian was the kind of smart that makes your straight A student look like she’d drown in a wet paper ...
MATT K. TURNER It is a small world. You do not have to live in it particuarly long to learn that for yourself. Ther...
NEIL GAIMAN Pessimism is an excuse for not trying and a guarantee to a personal failure.
WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON Pessimism is an excuse for not trying and a guarantee to a personal failure.
BILL CLINTON There is only a finger's difference between a wise man and a fool.
DIOGENES (All the grief she had suffered over her lifetime had moulded her face into a mask of eternal sadnes...
JEAN SASSON What you taken for granted, could mean a lot to another.
ZENG HAN JUN Have & Have Not
SAVAN SOLANKI Sorrowful and great is the artist's destiny.
FRANZ LISZT The SA is, and remains, Germany's destiny.
ERNST ROHM When you're a crime reporter, you see the nub of what life's about, and you don't have m...
HEATHER BROOKE I think there's a preoccupation with the American market to make excuses and justify its past. I...
LEON REDBONE Nobody's perfect, and to try to pretend you're perfect is an exhausting fool's errand.
ROSEMARY MAHONEY They got rid of bottled water. We got thermoses that say 'Grey's Anatomy Season 4' with ...
BROOKE SMITH 'Fargo' becomes a metaphor for a type of true crime case where truth is stranger than fictio...
NOAH HAWLEY Some players are criticised for having no loyalty. Well, I wanted to go back home and play for the c...
ALAN SHEARER We're not a racist organization, because we understand that racism is an excuse used for capital...
FRED HAMPTON If you set your goals ridiculously high and it's a failure, you will fail above everyone else...
JAMES CAMERON 'God's plan' is often a front for men's plans and a cover for inadequacy, ignorance,...
MARY DALY Are you taking us to the beach?" - Dan Cahill
JUDE WATSON Let's head out to the ruins." - Dan Cahill
ROLAND SMITH When people have a willpower failure, it's because they haven't anticipated a situation that...
CHARLES DUHIGG A minute's success pays the failure of years.
ROBERT BROWNING Any fool knows that bravado is always a cover-up for insecurity. That's the truth. And on that n...
BOBBY DARIN Because power corrupts, society's demands for moral authority and character increase as the impo...
JOHN ADAMS About f-f-ace!" she said to the horse, flailing with her boots. "Into the barn, please. It's time fo...
PETER LERANGIS You see?" Damien leaned over his desk and spread out half a dozen charcoal sketches. "These are only...
RICK RIORDAN Everyone should be commended for allowing people to make disasters, to make failures - you've ju...
MALCOLM MCLAREN In the 1990s, we introduced Boston's community policing strategy. We reversed the tide of violen...
THOMAS MENINO Distance is a bad excuse for not having a good relationship with somebody. It's the determinatio...
JAMES MCAVOY In every tyrant's heart there springs in the end this poison, that he cannot trust a friend.
AESCHYLUS

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AMBROSE BIERCE Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent.
AMBROSE BIERCE Success is the one unpardonable sin against our fellows.
AMBROSE BIERCE Optimist: a proponent of the doctrine that black is white.
AMBROSE BIERCE Litigant: a person about to give up his skin for the hope of retaining his bone.
AMBROSE BIERCE Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man - who has no gills.
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AMBROSE BIERCE OCEAN, n. A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man -- who has no gills.
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AMBROSE BIERCE Education, n.: That which discloses the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understand...
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AMBROSE BIERCE Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.
AMBROSE BIERCE You don't have to be stupid to be a Christian, ... but it probably helps.
AMBROSE BIERCE Ocean, n. A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man — who has no g...
AMBROSE BIERCE Fidelity. A virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.
AMBROSE BIERCE Incompatibility. In matrimony a similarity of tastes, particularly the taste for domination.
AMBROSE BIERCE The world has suffered more from the ravages of ill-advised marriages than from virginity.
AMBROSE BIERCE Marriage. The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress and two slaves, m...
AMBROSE BIERCE Bride. A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
AMBROSE BIERCE What is a democrat? One who believes that the republicans have ruined the country. What is a republi...
AMBROSE BIERCE Nominee. A modest gentleman shrinking from the distinction of private life and diligently seeking th...
AMBROSE BIERCE Learning. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.
AMBROSE BIERCE Consult. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.
AMBROSE BIERCE Happiness is an agreeable sensation, arising from contemplating the misery of others.
AMBROSE BIERCE Life. A spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay.
AMBROSE BIERCE Acquaintance: a degree of friendship called slight when its object is poor or obscure, and intimate ...
AMBROSE BIERCE An acquaintance is someone we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.
AMBROSE BIERCE A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
AMBROSE BIERCE Beauty. The power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.
AMBROSE BIERCE Let me tell you what a writer is. A writer takes comprehensive views, holds large convictions, makes...
AMBROSE BIERCE Corporation. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.
AMBROSE BIERCE Don't steal; thou it never thus compete successfully in business. Cheat.
AMBROSE BIERCE Philanthropist. A rich (and usually bald) old gentleman who has trained himself to grin while his co...
AMBROSE BIERCE Age. That period of life in which we compound for the vices that remain by reviling those we have no...
AMBROSE BIERCE Success is the one unpardonable sin against one's fellows.
AMBROSE BIERCE Education is that which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understan...
AMBROSE BIERCE Destiny. A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.
AMBROSE BIERCE Edible. Good to eat and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pi...
AMBROSE BIERCE Knowledge is the small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify.
AMBROSE BIERCE Erudition. Dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.
AMBROSE BIERCE Saint. A dead sinner revised and edited.
AMBROSE BIERCE Insurrection. An unsuccessful revolution; disaffection's failure to substitute misrule for bad gover...
AMBROSE BIERCE Revolution is an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.
AMBROSE BIERCE Impiety. Your irreverence toward my deity.
AMBROSE BIERCE Deliberation. The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is buttered on.
AMBROSE BIERCE Take not God's name in vain; select a time when it will have effect.
AMBROSE BIERCE A prejudice is a vagrant opinion without visible means of support.
AMBROSE BIERCE Bigot, one who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.
AMBROSE BIERCE Pray: To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly un...
AMBROSE BIERCE Eulogy. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration t...
AMBROSE BIERCE Admiration; is our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
AMBROSE BIERCE To bother about the best method of accomplishing an accidental result.
AMBROSE BIERCE A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
AMBROSE BIERCE All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher.
AMBROSE BIERCE A lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves a glorious success.
AMBROSE BIERCE Peace, in international affairs, is a period of cheating between two periods of fighting.
AMBROSE BIERCE Patience, n. A minor form of dispair, disguised as a virtue.
AMBROSE BIERCE Optimism. The doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly.
AMBROSE BIERCE An optimist is a proponent of the doctrine that black is white.
AMBROSE BIERCE They say that hens do cackle loudest when there is nothing vital in the eggs they have laid.
AMBROSE BIERCE Calamities are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
AMBROSE BIERCE Heaven lies about us in our infancy and the world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward.
AMBROSE BIERCE As records of courts and justice are admissible, it can easily be proved that powerful and malevolen...
AMBROSE BIERCE Before undergoing a surgical operation, arrange your temporal affairs. You may live.
AMBROSE BIERCE Politeness -- The most acceptable hypocrisy.
AMBROSE BIERCE A man is known by the company he organizes.
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AMBROSE BIERCE Enthusiasm. A distemper of youth, curable by small doses of repentance in connection with outward ap...
AMBROSE BIERCE Egotist. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than me.
AMBROSE BIERCE An egotist is a person interested in himself than in me!
AMBROSE BIERCE Duty. That which sternly impels us in the direction of profit, along the line of desire.
AMBROSE BIERCE Opiate. An unlocked door in the prison of Identity. It leads into the jail yard.
AMBROSE BIERCE Insurance: An ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the comforta...
AMBROSE BIERCE Backbite. To speak of a man as you find him when he can't find you.
AMBROSE BIERCE Alien. An American sovereign in his probationary state.
AMBROSE BIERCE Miss: A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that they are in the market. Miss, Mis...
AMBROSE BIERCE Witticism. A sharp and clever remark, usually quoted and seldom noted; what the Philistine is please...
AMBROSE BIERCE Wit. The salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it out.
AMBROSE BIERCE A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man, who has no gills.
AMBROSE BIERCE Impartial. Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a cont...
AMBROSE BIERCE Dog. A kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the worl...
AMBROSE BIERCE Physician -- One upon whom we set our hopes when ill and our dogs when well.
AMBROSE BIERCE Divorce. A resumption of diplomatic relations and rectification of boundaries.
AMBROSE BIERCE Consul. In American politics, a person who having failed to secure an office from the people is give...
AMBROSE BIERCE Forgetfulness. A gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscien...
AMBROSE BIERCE A cynic is a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, and not as they ought to be.
AMBROSE BIERCE Confidante. One entrusted by A with the secrets of B confided to herself by C.
AMBROSE BIERCE The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
AMBROSE BIERCE Future. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is ...
AMBROSE BIERCE A funeral is a pageant whereby we attest our respect for the dead by enriching the undertaker.
AMBROSE BIERCE An accident is an inevitable occurrence due to the actions of immutable natural laws.
AMBROSE BIERCE To apologize is to lay the foundation for a future offense.
AMBROSE BIERCE An account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly k...
AMBROSE BIERCE Historian. A broad -- gauge gossip.
AMBROSE BIERCE Habit is a shackle for the free.
AMBROSE BIERCE Laughter -- An interior convulsion, producing a distortion of the features and accompanied by inarti...
AMBROSE BIERCE Litigant. A person about to give up his skin for the hope of retaining his bones.
AMBROSE BIERCE Appeal. In law, to put the dice into the box for another throw.
AMBROSE BIERCE Trial. A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, ad...
AMBROSE BIERCE Experience is a revelation in the light of which we renounce our errors of youth for those of age.
AMBROSE BIERCE Experience. The wisdom that enables us to recognize in an undesirable old acquaintance the folly tha...
AMBROSE BIERCE The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
AMBROSE BIERCE PROPHECY, n. The art and practice of selling one's credibility for future delivery.
AMBROSE BIERCE When in Rome, do as Rome does.
AMBROSE BIERCE To be positive: to be mistaken at the top of one's voice.
AMBROSE BIERCE Censor, n. An officer of certain governments, employed to supress the works of genius. Among the Rom...
AMBROSE BIERCE Bore -- a person who talks when you wish him to listen.
AMBROSE BIERCE Ambition. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by frie...
AMBROSE BIERCE Irreligion. The principal one of the great faiths of the world.
AMBROSE BIERCE Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things withou...
AMBROSE BIERCE Architect. One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money.
AMBROSE BIERCE Genealogy. An account of one's descent from an ancestor who did not particularly care to trace his o...
AMBROSE BIERCE Absurdity. A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
AMBROSE BIERCE Abstainer. A weak man who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.
AMBROSE BIERCE Woman absent is woman dead.
AMBROSE BIERCE The covers of this book are too far apart.
AMBROSE BIERCE Abscond. To move in a mysterious way, commonly with the property of another.
AMBROSE BIERCE Creditor. One of a tribe of savages dwelling beyond the Financial Straits and dreaded for their deso...
AMBROSE BIERCE A coward is one who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.
AMBROSE BIERCE Conservative. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from a Liberal, who wi...
AMBROSE BIERCE The Senate is a body of old men charged with high duties and misdemeanors.
AMBROSE BIERCE Compromise. Such an adjustment of conflicting interests as gives each adversary the satisfaction of ...
AMBROSE BIERCE Alliance. In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserte...
AMBROSE BIERCE ALLIANCE, n. In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply in...
AMBROSE BIERCE Acquaintance is a degree of friendship called slight when its object is poor and obscure, and intima...
AMBROSE BIERCE ARSENIC, n. A kind of cosmetic greatly affected by the ladies, whom it greatly affects in turn."Eat ...
AMBROSE BIERCE Compromise. Such an adjustment of conflicting interests as gives each adversary the satisfaction o...
AMBROSE BIERCE Convent. A place of retirement for women who wish for leisure to meditate upon the sin of idleness.
AMBROSE BIERCE Religion. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.
AMBROSE BIERCE International arbitration may be defined as the substitution of many burning questions for a smoulde...
AMBROSE BIERCE DIPLOMACY, n. Lying in state, or the patriotic art of lying for one's country.
AMBROSE BIERCE Calamities are of two kinds. Misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
AMBROSE BIERCE Calamities are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
AMBROSE BIERCE A bride is a woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
AMBROSE BIERCE Painting, n.: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and exposing them to the critic.
AMBROSE BIERCE There are 4 kinds of Homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy.
AMBROSE BIERCE FIDELITY, n. A virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.
AMBROSE BIERCE ZOOLOGY, n. The science and history of the animal kingdom, including its king, the House Fly ("Mus...
AMBROSE BIERCE HIPPOGRIFF, n. An animal (now extinct) which was half horse and half griffin. The griffin was a com...
AMBROSE BIERCE ZENITH, n. The point in the heavens directly overhead to a man standing or a growing cabbage. A m...
AMBROSE BIERCE YANKEE, n. In Europe, an American. In the Northern States of our Union, a New Englander. In the So...
AMBROSE BIERCE Hypocrisy: prejudice with a halo
AMBROSE BIERCE Forgetfulness. A gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscie...
AMBROSE BIERCE One who is in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.
AMBROSE BIERCE OBSESSED, p.p. Vexed by an evil spirit, like the Gadarene swine and other critics. Obsession was onc...
AMBROSE BIERCE Optimism. The doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly.
AMBROSE BIERCE Women and foxes, being weak, are distinguished by superior tact.
AMBROSE BIERCE Saint: A dead sinner revised and edited.
AMBROSE BIERCE QUEEN, n. A woman by whom the realm is ruled when there is a king, and through whom it is ruled wh...
AMBROSE BIERCE When you are ill make haste to forgive your enemies, for you may recover.
AMBROSE BIERCE Electricity seems destined to play a most important part in the arts and industries. The question of...
AMBROSE BIERCE Electricity is the power that causes all natural phenomena not known to be caused by something else.
AMBROSE BIERCE ECCENTRICITY, n. A method of distinction so cheap that fools employ it to accentuate their incapaci...
AMBROSE BIERCE LAND, n. A part of the earth's surface, considered as property. The theory that land is property s...
AMBROSE BIERCE The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
AMBROSE BIERCE Birth: The first and direst of all disasters.
AMBROSE BIERCE Dawn: When men of reason go to bed.
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AMBROSE BIERCE Amnesty, n. The state's magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish.
AMBROSE BIERCE Patriotism. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.
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AMBROSE BIERCE Edible, adj.: Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake ...
AMBROSE BIERCE Jealous, adj. Unduly concerned about the preservation of that which can be lost only if not worth ke...
AMBROSE BIERCE Dog - a kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the wor...
AMBROSE BIERCE Acquaintance. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.
AMBROSE BIERCE Perseverance - a lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success.
AMBROSE BIERCE Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities ...
AMBROSE BIERCE Prescription: A physician's guess at what will best prolong the situation with least harm to the...
AMBROSE BIERCE Lawsuit: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.
AMBROSE BIERCE Compromise, n. Such an adjustment of conflicting interests as gives each adversary the satisfaction ...
AMBROSE BIERCE The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them up.
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AMBROSE BIERCE Egotist, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.
AMBROSE BIERCE Positive, adj.: Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
AMBROSE BIERCE Beauty, n: the power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.
AMBROSE BIERCE Sweater, n. Garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.
AMBROSE BIERCE Sabbath - a weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God made the world in six days and wa...
AMBROSE BIERCE The small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify we give the name of knowledge.
AMBROSE BIERCE